Let's Play

This weekend I sat at the edge of a creek and watched my son play with one of his best friends, and I thought, I want to be more like them. I took so much joy listening to their conversation, which went something like this...

"Wait let’s play animal kingdom but we have to be water animals and I’m a crocodile. -- Okay, I’m an eel! -- But you can’t be an eel, they don’t live in creeks. -- Yeah, they can. No I’m gonna be a water snake so I can be on water and on land. -- I’m gonna be a salamander. We don’t eat each other. We're friends. -- Look I found frog eggs! -- Look! A CURRENT! LITERALLY!”

Through the eyes of children... that's how I want to see this world. I want to see the wonders that they see all around, wonders I might just miss if I had walked down to this creek alone, without their little eyes and ears showing me the way.

Play. It’s an intention I never think to focus on in my practice. Gratitude, Love, Peace, Patience, Calm… these are all regular intentions that I try to channel when I step on my mat, but on Saturday, our teacher Bree gave us the option to randomly choose an intention from a box, which I had never done before, and I pulled out: “Play.”

“The intention you choose is never an accident,” Bree said. At first I thought, “Play? What about my calm, my peace, my gratitude?” But as I flowed from downward dog to plank to lizard, I tried even more than usual to take pleasure in every movement and find joy in every moment of stillness and to smile through my warriors.

“Maximize every moment of aliveness,” is how Bree's intention booklet described “Play." The intention we choose is not an accident, and “Play” is an intention I need to bring into my practice and my life more often.

We forget in the day-to-day grind to be just be silly, to have fun, to play with the jubilation of a child when we can. When I walked down to the creek with two 7-year-old boys, I soaked up their exuberance. I let their joy wash over me. I allowed myself to be in the moment and skip rocks with them and giggle with them and think about what water animal I might like to be (a manatee, definitely a manatee).

The next time I’m in class and I choose to focus on one of my "regular" intentions, like gratitude, I know what I'm going to feel most grateful for. Happy little boys who I want to be more like, skipping rocks and playing animal kingdom, delighting in frog eggs on a rock and celebrating the discovery of the tiniest current in the stream, literally.

Namaste.